Trouble in Blogging Paradise

I was happily working on a blog post one day, when I tried to upload a picture and was informed that I'd used up all my storage space and asked if I'd like to purchase more.  Up to this point, blogging has cost me nothing, which is one of the things I've found most appealing about it.  I looked around in some help forums and found that other people were having trouble too.  Some had purchased more storage and still couldn't upload pictures, etc.  I looked into Blogger's policy and found out that you get 1GB of free storage for pictures and videos.  Any photos that are less than 800x800 pixels or videos shorter than 15 min, don't count toward that limit.  In other words, you can upload as many small files as you like.  Problem solved!  But wait.  When I went to upload my photos to Picasa Web Albums (the place where Blogger stores your blogged photos) it worked for a couple pictures and then started giving me an "Unknown Server Error" even though I was changing the pictures to the smaller size.  As you can imagine, this was enormously frustrating.  I tried everything to get past that server error.  I posted questions on help forums that went unanswered.  I went through all the troubleshooting.  I deleted cookies and caches, I adjusted the firewall, tinkered with toggles, I was messing with things I never even knew existed!  I even tried deleting pictures from older posts.  Nothing worked.

I was encouraged, by cooler heads, to go ahead and purchase more storage, but at this point it had become a matter of principle.  If Blogger's policy had stated that you got 1GB of free storage and then after that you had to start paying, then fine.  But it didn't.  It said that small files wouldn't count toward the storage limit but if you wanted to upload larger images you were welcome to upgrade your storage--good luck uploading your small files.  I didn't care how cheap it was, I wasn't giving them a dime.

So I sent the question out on Facebook and got a lot of great ideas.  The one I ended up going with was a site called Photobucket.com where I could upload my pictures and then copy the URL onto my blog and...Presto!  Pictures on the blog again!  I can heave a sigh of relief and continue on my merry way, a mere $5 a year richer, but nevertheless.

Also, if you've tried to comment on my blog in the past and have met with all kinds of trouble trying to make out those strange symbols that are there to determine if you're a robot, and it has sent you into some kind of existential crisis because, I mean, what if you are a robot, I think I've solved the problem.  I've made some changes to my settings which should make life a little easier for all of us.

So, all's well in Blogging Paradise again :)